In keeping with the German theme for the weekend, after having a leisurely Sunday morning (Saturday PM was daylight saving time, so we sprang forward and slept in all the way to 8:00 a.m.!), we decided to go for a leisurely drive since nothing here is open on Sundays except at the train station. We headed up to the Black Forest, which is just across the river in Germany. First we got stopped by German border guards, presumably because we still have our Virginia plates on our car (it's perfectly legal, but when people drive past us they stare so hard you would think we had a third eye in the middle of our foreheads or something). No worries, they stamped our passports and we were on our way.

Unlike the Alps, the Black Forest is not as dramatic, but what it lacks in spectacle it makes up for in quaintness. After driving around for awhile, we finally got out and stretched our legs at Schluchsee, which is on a beautiful lake (and nothing makes Gretchen happier than seeing a lake). At one point we even came upon a ski resort at Feldberg, which was a bit of a surprise since skiing in the Black Forest is supposed to pale in comparison to the Alps. The area looked small, but fun, although it appeared that rope tows outnumbered chairlifts. Anyway, all of this was within an hour or two of Basel.